


Scenes from a resurrection

by knitmeapony



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/F, Resurrection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-26
Updated: 2013-11-26
Packaged: 2018-01-02 16:59:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1059321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knitmeapony/pseuds/knitmeapony
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Talia Hale returns from the dead - and these are the moments that will stick in her memory</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scenes from a resurrection

**Author's Note:**

  * For [verity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/verity/gifts).



> A rather thorough re-write of season 3, keeping only the canon I like. I wish I had time to do more with this than I did. I hope you like it.

She could hardly breathe, and then she realized she was breathing.

Sensation rushed through her atrophied nerves all at once, too loud to manage at first, and she felt the wolf rise inside her raw and wild and afraid.  The only motion she made for one long moment was the endless twitch and shift of her skin and the near-imperceptible lift of her chest as she took slow, shallow breaths to assess the room.

Blood, first, and plenty; at the first scent she realized some of it was hers, most of it was on her, and she took stock: pain, none; skin, unbroken; bones, whole; joints, begging to move; muscles, shuddering and ready to leap into action. Nothing was so comforting as her own faculties, just as she remembered them, and she took a deeper breath.

Past the blood and sweat of her own body she could smell two people -- two women -- who were as still as she; each with a note of fear and an undertone of arousal.  Teenagers, then -- girls, not women -- and so less to fear from them than from most, even if there was still fire and ash and ozone in the room.

So at last she moved, unsheathed herself from the shallow hole where she'd been buried, stretched and let the blood and ash and clay that covered her crack and start to drop off her.  She sped the mess along with her fingers, first hands and then her face when she realized it peeled off like a second skin and left her clean and cold and comfortable.

The girls were watching her, and they were wary but they stood their ground --  fingers laced together, shoulder to shoulder, backs against the wall -- and she met each of their eyes before she flicked her attention down, searching for the telltale lines and scars that'd tell their story.

Hm.

"You're not wolves," she said, "and you're not witches.  But you're an Argent.  So you," she said to the girl with the scar on her throat.  "Tell me who you are and what you've done."

The girl stepped forward without hesitation, chin up, eyes bright.  "My name is Lydia Martin," she said.  "Let's start by getting you a coat."

\--

It had to do with Peter.  Of course it had to do with Peter.  Talia'd always kept a mental list of family she might have to take care of some day, and he'd always been in the top five.  By the time the girls had resurrected her Peter was too far gone to be saved, and she'd done what needed to be done without hesitation or regret.

Regret was saved for after, when she browsed the empty shelves in the shell of her home, fingertips picking up ash and soot that'd never gotten cleaned, found the wrinkled, melted plastic from photo albums that'd never been filled.

Nesting didn't come naturally to her, but it was soothing, and it took weeks to get the place into some kind of order.  Derek grumbled about her being up all hours, and Cora left sometimes, not ready yet to admit what the soot and ash might be.  After, though, when a room was left whole, when it was all scrubbed clean and she'd repainted walls in just the right colors and re-hung art she'd found at thrift stores and garage sales, they'd spend more time in those rooms.  They spent more time at home.

They spent too much time together, her children, too much time solving other people's problems, but it gave her space to think and room to heal, and when they came home they always found a more settled mother than they'd left behind.

Six weeks to the day she heard an unfamiliar crunch of boots on snow, and after flicking back the curtain she opened the door with a ghost of a smile.

"Scott."  She smiled and tipped her head by inches, just enough to acknowledge an equal entering her territory.  

"Mrs. Hale," he said.

"You know Derek and Cora are out."

"Yeah, I know."  He looked sheepish, one hand on the back of his neck, and she could've sworn she'd seen that smile on another face before.  "I came here to talk to you."

She took him to the kitchen and poured them tall glasses of juice (which seemed to entertain him for some reason) and they both sat down, eye to eye and silent for a very long moment.

She'd expected hostility, but the longer the silence stretched, the more she realized it was amicable.  They were getting used to each other, it seemed.

"You're here about Derek and Cora, aren't you?"  

His fingertips went white against the glass for just a second, almost a flinch. "I never meant to take them from you."

She smiled and leaned forward. "You didn't.  And I am not here to take them back."

He relaxed all at once, smile breaking across his face like the dawn, and she knew she'd seen that look somewhere before.

"Would you like to know something interesting about wolves in the wild?" She sketched an odd pattern on the tabletop with her fingers as she talked, marking chapter and verse in all the books she'd read.  "There's no such thing as an alpha, not really.  The man who observed them first saw what he wanted to see.  In the wild, there's no time for dominance and violence against your family.  He took the worst of human behavior, and he projected it onto lupine civilization.  I suppose it made him feel better to think that what he felt and how he behaved was only natural."

 

Scott leaned forward, attached to her every word.  He listened with his whole body, he was starving for this kind of conversation.  It made him very easy to trust.  "There's no denying alphas exist, for us.  True alphas like you, particularly, there's meaning to it.  I think, though, that it's time we stopped letting history and the hunters tell us what that meaning is."  She glanced up, eyes flashing gold, and his flashed in return.  "There aren't enough of us left to do violence to our own family.  And the only thing I know, the one absolute fact that remains true, is that we're stronger together than we are apart."

He nodded, and she let him think, let the comfortable silence wrap around them again.

"I don't know much about being a wolf," he admitted, and she chuckled low in her throat.

"You could've fooled me," she said.  "But I'll teach you what I know."

\--

Magic had always been outside of Talia's expertise; she left it to the witches and the hunters and the humans.  Still, she'd never been one to deny her senses, and she'd been getting echoes for weeks -- the ringing of a bell in the morning, car exhaust in late afternoon.  And sometimes, if she was quiet, the ghost of fingers on her skin just after midnight.

It wasn't a problem, not yet, but she kept a journal of every instance.  It faded to nothing in time, and she found she missed it a little -- it was an odd bit of company to fill the longer days.

She found other things to fill the time -- Isaac and Derek and Cora were as happy to have her in the pack as Scott, and there were always things to research, things to teach.  She'd picked back up some of her old hobbies, and it didn't take long before her life felt useful and busy again.

And there were always surprises, even out in the middle of the woods -- like three cars turning up the path, emptying out like unstoppered sinks and flooding her house, quite suddenly, with teenagers.  The pack, of course, but more, too, people she hadn't seen in weeks -- Lydia and Allison who were grateful to see her, and Stiles of course, and a new boy, Danny, who was clearly torn between protecting Scott and letting Scott protect him.

She kicked them all out of her kitchen and into the front room, clean and finally filled with furniture that'd never been left sitting on a curb.

She loped upstairs to look for the books Deaton had loaned her and found she didn't mind in the slightest when Lydia followed her up.

"I've been meaning to find you to thank you," she admitted as she ran her finger along the titles.

"It's not like it was my choice," Talia knew Lydia's sour expression wasn't exactly for her.

"What's bothering you?"

"There's a smell.  Vinegar and lemon.  It's like it's following me, and now it's here."

Talia turned, and she watched the pieces snap into place in Lydia's mind, just as they were clicking in hers.  "Homemade wood polish.  You drive home every day.  Late afternoon.  I always smell the exhaust."

"You go swimming in the morning.  The water's so cold."

"It's the pond."  She tipped her head.  "I hear bells in the morning."

"Monday through Friday."

"School," they said at the same time, and Talia smiled.  "So.  Ever since you brought me back…"

"We brought you back."  Allison had slid up the stairs without alerting either of them -- damn, her mother taught her well, she thought -- and she stepped up just behind Lydia, looking over her shoulder.  "I can hear it too."

Talia watched the two of them for a moment, watching them shift next to each other, settling in without anything that'd be mistaken for personal space.

"It is fading," she said, finally.  

The two girls turned to glance at one another for a long minute, having a half a conversation in just a look.

"For you, maybe.  For us, not really."

The way Lydia'd said it, the way she'd hesitated before the us -- it made Talia smile.

"It's only going to get stronger if you keep sleeping in the same bed."  Talia'd expected some hesitation or embarrassment -- they were only seventeen, after all -- but Allison just smiled and put an arm around Lydia, and Lydia'd smirked up at Allison and leaned back against her shoulder.

"Sometimes magic and sex and good intentions do end well," Talia said with a chuckle.  "Let's deal with this crisis first, and then we'll see if we need to worry about the two of you."

\--

She left her door unlocked, these days, though there was a threshold around the place, stronger than anything she'd ever felt before.  Stiles and Danny had gotten clever, once they'd learned what'd happened to Allison and Lydia, and they'd found a way to use it to their advantage.  

It'd been overwhelming at first, but they'd all gotten used to it, gotten better at controlling what leaked through the magic bond that tied them all together.  Talia could reach out and find them all, if she closed her eyes; the reek of oil as Derek tried to keep his car together, the taste of vanilla and cherry chapstick that meant Lydia and Allison were at the library again, dirt and cologne and the unmistakable weight of padding from all the boys -- and Cora -- out on the lacrosse field.

She smiled to herself and left the cap off the furniture polish bottle; they'd smell it soon enough, and think of her, and come home.

 


End file.
